Three Ghost Stories
()
About this ebook
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
Read more from Charles Dickens
Legal Loopholes: Credit Repair Tactics Exposed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Charles Dickens Collection Volume One: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Bleak House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels (Quattro Classics) (The Greatest Writers of All Time) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5David Copperfield (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #64] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Ghost Stories Of Charles Dickens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Christmas Carol: Level 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Book of Christmas Tales: 250+ Short Stories, Fairytales and Holiday Myths & Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Notes: For General Circulation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Charles Dickens Collection Volume Two: Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby, and Our Mutual Friend Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCharles Dickens: Four Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Beautiful Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOliver Twist: Level 4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Three Ghost Stories
Related ebooks
Three Ghost Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Haunted House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Mystery and Detective Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Haunted House, and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Ghost Stories: Short Scary Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lock and Key Library Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lock and Key Library: Old-Time English: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpectres In Silk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Haunted House: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gullivar of Mars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChristmas Numbers of ‘All the Year Round’ by Charles Dickens (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House in the Mist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gulliver of Mars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMedusa's Coil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Augur Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGulliver of Mars (Serapis Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gulliver of Mars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Haunted House of 1859: Paranormal Parlor, A Weiser Books Collection Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/57 best short stories - Spain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLook Back on Happiness Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gulliver of Mars (Sci-Fi Classic) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Phantastes a Faerie Romance for men and women Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Haunted House (Fantasy and Horror Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Rider on the White Horse: Gothic Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGulliver of Mars: Science Fiction Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Life for a Life, Volume 2 (of 3) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGulliver of Mars Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Condensed Moby Dick: Abridged for the Modern Reader Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House in the Mist: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Courtship of Morrice Buckler Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The New Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Also Rises: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Three Ghost Stories
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Three Ghost Stories - Charles Dickens
Three Ghost Stories
CHARLES DICKENS
THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
IN TWO CHAPTERS. [121]
[1859.]
THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE.
Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people—and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.
The manner of my lighting on it was this.
I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn’t been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the p. 122man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.
It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:
"I beg your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me?" For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.
The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:
In you, sir?—B.
B, sir?
said I, growing warm.
I have nothing to do with you, sir,
returned the gentleman; pray let me listen—O.
He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.
At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don’t believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.
You will excuse me,
said the gentleman contemptuously, if I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in spiritual intercourse.
O!
said I, somewhat snappishly.
The conferences of the night began,
continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, with this message: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’
Sound,
said I; but, absolutely new?
New from spirits,
returned the gentleman.
I could only repeat my rather snappish O!
and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication.
‘A bird in the hand,’
said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, ‘is worth two in the Bosh.’
p. 123Truly I am of the same opinion,
said I; but shouldn’t it be Bush?
It came to me, Bosh,
returned the gentleman.
The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.
Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. "I am glad to see you, amico. Come sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio! In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name,
Bubler," for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.